1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the automation of supplying components for a product to be manufactured and more particularly to an improved system that utilizes Boolean flagged demand statements to properly allocate available components.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to provide a sufficient volume of components needed to manufacture a given product, material requirements planning (MRP) programs are utilized. Such programs estimate the different volumes of the different components based upon sales forecasts and other information. However, the actual sales often deviate from the sales forecast which results in an excessive number of unneeded parts and a deficient number of needed parts.
When updating the forecast of needed components, managers often face the situation of being unable to supply finished products to customers who have agreed to purchase the products. This can occur because the actual sales exceeded the sales forecast or because the planning program did not estimate a sufficient number of components for the given product.
In addition, different products can have different priorities. For example, products which have already been sold and only need to be manufactured and delivered generally have a higher priority than the products that are being manufactured in the hope that they will be sold. Similarly, different customers can be given a different priority, depending upon their value to the company. It is important that a manufacturing organization allocate the limited supply of components to the products having the highest demand priority before such components are released to other lower-priority products.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and system that takes into account the limited availability of components, and allocates these components to the highest-priority products. In addition, such a system should provide information as to which components are in short supply, so that managers can increase inventory of such needed components. The invention described below provides such a system that is cost-efficient, properly allocates the components to the appropriate products, reduces the lead time for manufacturing, and reduces unnecessary component ordering.